Currently, there are a variety of systems that are designed to test and identify potential faults in communication networks. With the proliferation and increased complexity of communication networks, it has become difficult to diagnose potential faults (either hardware or software) that may be causing communication errors. When a problem communication is detected, just establishing a second communication between the same devices for testing may not be sufficient to identify a specific cause of the problem. The reason is because the same network path is unlikely to be used in both communications. The two communications may use different links, gateways, ports, software, and the like.
An example of the above problem is illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 7,173,910. A series of test probes are deployed around the boarder of a Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) network. VOIP calls are placed between the test probes to identify a quality of service between the test probes. This solution suffers from the above problems because each time a VOIP call is made over the VOIP network, a different communication path may be used. Thus, a first VOIP communication that is established between two probes may get very different test results than a second VOIP communication between the same two test probes because the two communications may traverse a different communication path on the VOIP network. This solution may be able to identify that there is a problem in the network, but it cannot diagnose where in the network a problem resides.
Other solutions send test data in conjunction with an existing communication rather than setting up a second communication. For example, U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2002/0193999 discloses a system that adds test information to an ongoing voice communication. This allows a quality measurement for a specific voice call. However, this solution does not determine what network elements are involved in the voice communication; but instead it is used to determine the quality of service of a particular voice call. Moreover, this solution adds overhead to existing voice communications by increasing the number of packets sent for each communication. Like the prior solutions, this system may be able to diagnose that there may be a quality of service problem between two communication devices, but it cannot diagnose where in the network a problem resides.